


I'll know my name as it's called again

by inplayruns



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, ep 7.12: Time After Time, v. slashy gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-30
Updated: 2012-01-30
Packaged: 2017-10-30 08:14:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/329679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inplayruns/pseuds/inplayruns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's not much to do when you're bored in 1940.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll know my name as it's called again

**Author's Note:**

> Written before 7.12, "Time After Time After Time," based on an idea from "The Song Remains the Same." Totally Kripke'd, still fun to imagine.

It figures, Dean’s brain manages to push out through the parts of his brain that still have oxygen supporting them, that this would be his end. He’s survived a thousand demons and ghosts and nasty belly-to-the-ground things. He’s been in car crashes and rushed his brother out of a burning house when he was barely four years old. Fuck, he’s been shot through the chest and came back alive. Gabriel killed him a hundred times to make some point to Sam. He watched the Mother of All fizzle into goo and shoved Lucifer into the Pit and shot the yellow-eyed thing that tore apart his family in the head.

But what’s going to end him is Castiel, the heel of his palm jammed up into his windpipe.

This isn’t _Cas_. ( _Cas is gone_ , a cracked smile tells him. _He’s dead!_ Dean forces the thought away.) It’s Castiel, the angel, his power hissing up Dean’s spine even as it’s pressed into the wall. Dean’s eyes move from the ruined summoning sigil on the floor, Castiel’s boots smearing the paint, to the wall. The shadows of two enormous wings sprout from behind his back and something in Dean’s gut kicks.

“ _Who are you_ ,” Castiel demands. In no way is this the Cas Dean knew; he’s not even using that guy Jimmy as a vessel. There are similarities, like maybe this guy was a great-uncle, but the jaw is far heavier, and he’s taller and almost husky. Castiel never needed the extra strength, not with the way he made Dean’s whole body hum from the minute he split the bolt on the barn door into splinters. “We no longer walk this planet. How do you know my name?”

Dean doesn’t look too closely at his eyes. He knows they’re just as blue and alien as Cas’ ever were.

“Castiel,” Dean rasps out, and it only makes the angel’s entire face twitch, as if he was slapped. “I – I’m Dean Winchester, I’m –”

The hand slips, up from where Dean’s collarbone meets his throat to his neck. Castiel’s fingertips push in just a bit; a few tiny movements and Dean will be lifeless. But he can breathe, now.

Castiel’s voice is a growl, an otherworldly thing thrust out through human vocal cords. That much hasn’t changed. “Dean Winchester?” He blinks, and Dean’s grateful for the second-long break from the electricity of the blue in his eyes. “The Righteous Man? You do not even belong here.” Still, the hand comes down, just a little, and Dean’s heels can touch the floor. “If I understand the way humanity measures time, you won’t be born for another forty years.”

“I know, I – ” Dean’s not sure how to explain the whole mix-up with the God of Time to Castiel that isn’t Castiel. He’s less scary but more distant than when he played God, even with his palm pressed all the way up against Dean’s windpipe. “I got stuck here by accident.”

Castiel – oh, fuck – he does that stupid and absolutely _not_ cute head-tilt thing. “Are you involved with angels here?”

In response, Dean barks out a laugh that cuts off, quick and bitter, when the fingers around his throat tighten just a little. “Yeah. Involved.”

“Why did you summon me here?”

Boredom, Dean wants to say. He doesn’t have his laptop and he’s not sure any sort of computer’s been invented, even the hulking monolith shit. His phone gets no service. He’s stuck waiting at the house while Ness goes out on runs to shoot down ghosts, because they don’t trust him here yet. But it’s not boredom.

“In the future,” he starts. “You’re gonna meet me.”

Castiel’s jaw slides, a bit, the eyes squinting, and Dean doesn’t know how his body doesn’t burst into ash there, leaving a sooty shadow against the wall (like wings) and nothing else. “An angel of my stature wouldn’t deal with the Righteous Man.”

“Yeah, well, you do. Maybe it’s punishment or something.” The way wrinkles gather at the corners of this vessel’s eyes pushes Dean’s thoughts toward another time Castiel pressed him against a wall, hand cool and dry against his mouth, and he’d nodded. He’d trusted. “And Castiel, man, I – I am _sorry_.”

His throat is suddenly thick, and it’s not the fingers against it. He’s choking on what he’s done, on this thing in front of him that’s stranger than the messy-haired angel that told him he deserved to be saved. Only it turns out Cas deserved that, too, and Dean couldn’t offer it to him – wouldn’t. Refused. Cas tore him out of Hell and Dean called him a child and a baby.

“I’m sorry.”

Castiel pulls his hand away. There is no understanding in his icy eyes; there isn’t anything. “I don’t want your pity. I don’t need it. I won’t. I am not made to deal with humanity.”

It figures, the most Dean has ever been able to talk about his fucking feelings for Cas comes when he’s in 1940, a stupid hat tipped on his head, trapped in Elliot Ness’ house, when Cas isn’t really _Cas_.

“You disturb me.” And then there are two fingers at his temple, and the whoosh right behind his ears that makes his knees buckle, and he’s on the floor in a crappy motel with – thank someone up there for some things – his big galoot of a brother tapping away on his laptop.

“Dean!” Sam pulls away, to crouch by him. “Oh, thank God.” His brows pull together. “How the hell did you get back?”

He’s not saying. Dean suspects Sam – well, suspects, because he’d given him big fucking speeches on how he can’t trust anyone since Cas, and all he got were stupid puppy eyes. “Guess the God of Time decided to stop being a dick,” he spits out, instead, and gets the hat and jacket off to go looking for some goddamn beer.

*

“Why were you summoned?” Zachariah demands of Castiel. The younger angel tries his very best to keep his face neutral. Zachariah is not pleasant, and he is used to Anna greeting him.

“Just a rogue,” he responds. “I believe he thought it would be humorous.”

“You don’t _understand_ , Castiel.” Zachariah’s Grace roars through Heaven. “Anna Fell while you were wasting time with those humans. We assumed it had something to do with her disgrace.”

Castiel had not even sensed it, too preoccupied he was with the constellation of freckles across the Righteous Man’s face, the pigmentation of green in his eyes, the threads of _Grace_ inside him. But Zachariah is not lying; he seeks out his brother’s song inside him and cannot hear it. He hears too many lamentations, instead.

“You watch out, Castiel,” Zachariah sniffs. Castiel had not particularly enjoyed the experience of being stuffed into a human form, but he could react more expressively. His form is not made for much either than battle, and song, and studying, and he has never been good at the first. Right now, he would not mind the ability to brandish his hands before him, or glance at anything but Zachariah’s twisted smile. “You are not like her, but you watch out. You took a vessel, and it is too easy to be seduced by all the ways of humanity.”

Castiel wishes he had a fist to clench, that he had somehow held onto the sensation of the Righteous Man’s pulse skipping in his neck. He does not understand why Anna chose to become a human, for he could barely stand the loathing and sorrow alike in Dean’s eyes. He is merely curious about what inspired it, and disturbed he recognized emotions at all.

He moves away to sing a lamentation with Abariel and Chermes and Melioth, hoping it will usher his thoughts in the proper direction. Surely, he must force himself to forget the flare of Anna’s wings burning off her body to streak across the sky, the stuttered and broken laugh of the Righteous Man. He is nothing like them.


End file.
